For a second year, PennLive marks Black History Month by recognizing “trailblazers and trendsetters”: leaders and advocates in central Pa. working to uplift their communities through their work, businesses, arts, ministries and mentorships.
In the coming weeks, we’ll publish more than 35 profiles of doctors, nurses, gardeners, ministers, educators, entrepreneurs, athletes, philanthropists, restauranteurs, authors, actors and others. They were nominated by readers and, for the most part, are people who have rarely been in the spotlight. More people were nominated than we were able to include; we’ll keep the names of those people for future profiles.
We hope you enjoy reading about these trailblazers. If you missed last year’s, you can find links to them here.
Mark Madden
Age: 37
Community: Harrisburg
His story: Teaching kids how to play football and being a club promoter are, on their faces, very different fields — but for Mark Madden, both represent the sort of social skills that have helped him succeed, and that he hopes will help the next generation as well.
“I’m just trying to help inner-city kids have someone to look up to other than what’s on TV,” said Madden, who coaches football for the league run by Capital Rebirth, a Harrisburg community nonprofit.
Madden said he grew up in Harrisburg’s public housing projects. Playing in various junior football leagues, and eventually in high school for Harrisburg, gave him the discipline and life skills that he fears aren’t as available to city youth today.
“I played sports a lot as a kid and being able to give back to the kids that play sports now is just a blessing and a plus for me,” Madden said. “When they actually learn what they want to do, that’s the best part for me. When they say ‘coach, I got it right,’ that’s the best part for me.”
Madden has three children – none of whom are particularly interested in football, he said. But the specific activity kids are engaged in matters less than the role models they develop.
“I want to make sure these kids are getting the knowledge and life lessons outside of football,” Madden said, in order to help them navigate “the peer pressures they have to deal with every day.”
Outside of football, Madden’s personal project has been his promotion business, bringing various acts – particularly comedy – to venues in the region.
“My mom said ‘you party so much, why don’t you have your own parties and make money?’” Madden recalled of his younger days. He’s now been doing it for 12 years, and uses part of the proceeds to give to other causes and sponsor kids in football programs.
In his words: “It’s a very difficult business, it has its ups and downs, but most of all it’s the connections that you have,” Madden said. “When you’re doing a club every weekend, it’s hard to get people to support you, you have to grow your following, grow your business, have your advertisements, be everything.”
Through it all, “knowing how to talk and relate to people is the thing that crosses over,” Madden said, and when it comes to disadvantaged youth seeing football as a guiding light out of hardship, he hopes to see “a lot more guys being active in these young men’s lives.”